4 Days To Dudes: "Twenty Girls Ago"

I spent a lot of 2007 on the road, playing keyboard in my friend Emerson Hart’s band. One day we pulled into Albany for a radio show at the Palace Theatre. Upon arriving for sound check, we met our opening act, an up-and-coming singer/songwriter named Ingrid Michaelson. Ingrid and I struck up a quick friendship that would blossom through the Autumn months, mostly via late night instant messaging sessions from hotel rooms in disparate locales all over the country. The nights were always bad for me, blurry drunk anonymous hours that felt lost forever until Ingrid would pop up on the computer screen with some smart-ass remark. She got me laughing at my sorry predicament, made me laugh about feeling so sorry for myself. She made me want to hit back, to start moving forward. She was the funniest girl I had ever met.

Ingrid invited me to her family’s Christmas Eve party on Staten Island that year. I baked an apple cake, fired up the Honda and set out towards the Verrazano Bridge. Her family’s three-story Victorian was wrapped in blinking lights and pine boughs. A Christmas tree glowed in the bay window and revelers overflowed onto the front porch. Inside, the house was crowded with family and friends in various combinations of brightly-colored sweaters. The whole place smelled of apples and mulled wine. One man wore a reindeer hat.

Later in the evening, Ingrid’s father began playing carols at the piano. A group of sweaters gathered around and began singing along. They were really enjoying themselves. Ingrid beckoned me to join them, but I couldn’t. It was all like a Norman Rockwell cartoon. Or a scene in a snow globe, one that I happened to be outside of.

Over the next few months, Ingrid and I lost touch. I moved back to Nashville and she got very busy. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but I sometimes I think about her Christmas party, the sentimental swirl of holiday music, the warmth of family and how wonderful and frightening it all was. It was, and it mattered. I have since learned to never miss an opportunity to lock arms with people, to sing around a piano, to be in the cartoon.

To wear the reindeer hat.

There was a sparkle and lightness to Ingrid; she was the kind of girl who knew how to throw a Christmas party.
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